Depths of the Dead
by redwallanderson
Summary: Some divers on a trip to salvage a recently-sunken cruise liner discover that they have bitten off more than they can chew.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

The diver moved slowly and carefully towards the shipwreck. It was a cruise liner that had gone to the bottom in a matter of minutes a few days before, and that certain diver and four of his comrades had been sent down the two hundred and twenty feet that it took to get to the wreck, to find out why it had sank exactly. No survivors had been recovered, and it was all over the news as the 'biggest tragedy since the _Titanic_'. It was a big mother, too, definitely longer than the _Titanic_ had been, and had carried a lot more passengers. The name on its side was _Cedes_, the diver saw, as his light flashed over it. The diver's fin-covered feet landed gingerly on the hull of the ship and he gazed in shock at what else his light revealed. There was a massive hole blown in the side of the cruise ship (the side which wasn't buried into the seabed), from the middle to nearly the top. After a moment, the diver turned and gave the thumbs-up to his comrades who were following him, and he swam carefully into the massive hole, anticipation filling his belly.

The diver looked around and saw that he had entered through what had once been a flight of wooden stairs (which were now smashed beyond repair) on what had once been E Deck. He hesitated a moment and swam deeper into the ship, and looked through a shattered doorway into what had once been a stateroom -- and he recoiled in horror, bubbles spilling out wildly and rapidly from the breathing regulator covering his mouth as fear and shock radiated outward from him.

A body floated inside the stateroom, tethered to the wall by a weak-looking rope. It was in the late stages of decomposition and fish had been feasting merrily on it as well, but that wasn't what horrified the diver. He had seen plenty of bodies in shipwrecks. What horrified the diver was that the body seemed to be alive. It looked at him grimly and opened its mouth, apparently trying to speak or moan or something. He stared at the thing and it stared back, trying to separate itself from the rope violently.

One of the diver's comrades came up as well and looked into the stateroom, and his face turned white and he flinched visibly at the sight. They stared a while at the living cadaver and then, without hesitation, the second diver swam forward and stuck one of his spare dive bags into the thing's mouth so it couldn't bite and he severed the rope with a dive knife, and he and the other diver took the struggling thing out of the stateroom to show the other divers.

----

The captain of the research vessel _Idol_ backed up a little, shocked into revulsion, when he saw the thing his divers had brought to the surface, restrained, and showed him. He took a deep breath.

"What is it, a vampire?" he asked, with the air of someone grasping for straws desperately. The two divers who had discovered the thing looked at one another and simultaneously shook their heads.

"We didn't have enough oxygen to search the rest of the ship _and_ bring this fella up, so we just decided to bring him up to the surface and search later. We do think there might be more down there and we _do_ think this may be why the ship sank, and why the hole was blown in the side. But we're _not_ sure," one of the divers said firmly. "But look . . . " He lifted the tattered, waterlogged rags that had been the thing's shirt and showed a few bullet holes in the decayed flesh of its chest. "How the fuck do you think that happened, eh?"

The captain took another deep breath. "This is some spooky shit, guys. We don't tell anybody outside the ship about this until we're sure what it is. Understand? No Myspace pics of this bastard, alright?" He stared down at the thing. "So there's possibly more of . . . of . . . these?"

"We are not exactly sure," the other diver explained, repeating his comrade's words. "But we _think_ so."

"My God," the captain whispered.

**Chapter One**

As the diver from before swam towards the wreck of the _Cedes_ once more, he almost started laughing before he reminded himself that he was more than two hundred feet underwater. Still, the urge to laugh in triumph was exceptionally strong within the diver. This was big. This was like the biggest thing since they discovered King Tut's tomb. He swam through the remains of the wooden staircase again and was disappointed to see that the way to the stateroom that they had found the thing in was now completely blocked. The hallway above had collapsed somehow, closing off the water-filled corridor that led to the stateroom. The diver made a silent grunt of frustration and looked around for another entrance.

He saw a door that somehow hadn't been torn off its hinges by the water flooding in days and days ago, and smiled behind his regulator and nudged the door open as carefully as he could. Many other less-professional divers would have been rushing inside at once, but this diver was pretty experienced and he knew that you never could be sure what was inside the dark interior of a shipwreck. If you got your tank ensnared in wires and couldn't reach the wires with your knife and got stuck, well, it was over. He carefully entered the door and saw another submerged hallway beyond and . . . surprise surprise, a decomposing body floating through it peacefully, undisturbed until now.

But the diver frowned. This one wasn't moving or looking at him. It was just a dead woman's body floating there with what looked like a small-caliber bullet wound between her eyes. The diver was about to inspect her further when . . . Suddenly there was lunging bodies everywhere, from every direction. The driver screamed and bubbles exploded out. One of the things tackled him and his regulator fell out and water filled his mouth and then his lungs and he writhed in the most horrible panic a human being can undergo. He was two hundred feet below the surface, trapped in a shipwreck with a bunch of zombies -- because, too late, he realized that these were zombies -- and he was drowning while they were devouring him.

Life sucked.

The other diver came around the end of the hallway. He had been following his buddy and he got there just in time to see the bloody confusion start, and he floated there gaping for a moment. In seconds, the fifteen or sixteen decaying zombies had reduced his partner to shreds of dive gear and bloody chunks. The diver exploded out of the shipwreck, swimming as fast as he could towards the surface two-hundred feet above, trying to convince himself this was just some horrible accident or just a nightmare or something but deep down, he knew that there was something fucked-up going on.

-------

The diver broke down in tears, kneeling on the deck of the ship back on the surface. He had managed to blurt out his story right before he broke down, though, and the captain standing in front of him stared at the water ominously.

"What are they?" the captain whispered, almost rhetorically.

"They're undead?" one of the other divers spat, a haunted look in his eyes. He was staring through the window of the main cabin nearby, where they had tied up the zombie they had recovered from the wreck. "They're fucking zombies."

The captain sighed. "Shit . . . " He stood there, thinking, for a moment. "I'm gonna examine the fuckin' specimen we got right now." He barged into the cabin where Jenny, the only female diver, was guarding the captured zombie, aiming the flare pistol at it cautiously. "Jenny, don't try and stop me. I gotta check this thing out." The captain went to grab the zombie, which was chained up without a gag in its mouth, across the room. The zombie lunged to meet him, and bit a chunk out of the knuckle of his right hand. The captain screamed and recoiled. "THAT FUCKING THING BIT ME."

He grabbed the flare gun from Jenny before she could stop him, aimed it at the zombie, and fired.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two**

A huge ball of flame engulfed the cabin as the flare went off and everything was confusion for a few long moments. The other divers ran inside to see what was going on, but the cabin was filled with smoke and turmoil and a strange moaning and flailing shapes and they all collided and tripped over one another.

James, the diver who had made it back to the surface, strained to see through the smoke, and then wished he hadn't. He saw the zombie-thing bent over the body of Jenny, devouring her ample hips as she writhed and tried to get away. Somehow, the chain had been severed, and even though the zombie was burning, it was still eating Jenny. The captain was bleeding like a stuck pig and screaming like a little school girl while he tried to reload the flare gun. James knew that it would take too long, so he stepped forward towards the zombie. It was the only thing he could do.

He kicked the zombie in the stomach and it rolled off of Jenny, but then it just got up and leaped into James, knocking him sprawling and screaming as burning flesh peeled off of the zombie and melted onto James' skin, burning him as well and leaving horrendous marks. That was the least of his worries, however, James knew, as the zombie hissed ferociously and bit him on the bicep.

"Get this fucker off of me!" James shrieked at the others divers and at the captain.

Frederick, another diver, ran forward and dealt a sudden, vicious kick to the zombie's face and it rolled off, a flap of skin separating from its decaying cheek, but that just turned its attention to Frederick and it lunged at him, mouth opened wide to take another bite.

But before it could reach Frederick, it was blasted in the face by another flare fired by the captain, who had managed to finally reload. The zombie was blown backwards, headless, and lay finally still upon the gore-drenched floor of the cabin.

The one other diver left besides Frederick and James was a young man who went by the name Eddie. He was standing at the door of the cabin staring in wordlessly at the bloody scene.

"That was fucking brutal," he whispered, and everybody nodded silently, panting hard.

-----

James sat on the railing of the ship, staring at his bandaged arm, which oozed blood still through the gauze. Frederick and Eddie were nearby quietly zipping the body of Jenny into a body bag. The captain was standing beside them, looking down suspiciously at Jenny's dead, blood-spattered face. His hand was bandaged as well.

"How do we know she's not gonna come back as one of those things?" he whispered, clutching the flare gun as if it were a life-line. Maybe it was, for him, anyways.

"She's fucking dead," Frederick answered broken-heartedly. James wasn't surprised; he knew that Frederick and Jenny had gone to school together for years and were very good friends and rumored 'friends with benefits'. Frederick dissolved into tears and sat down with his face in his hands.

The captain blinked, taken aback. "Just asking," he mumbled, turning his slightly bloodshot eyes away from the embarassing scene. "This is some real serious shit."

James fixed the captain with a cold stare. "I'm not going back down there to that fucking ship and neither is anyone else. If you wanna do your little research and get ripped to pieces, than go do it yourself. Do you understand? We don't get paid enough for this fucking bullshit."

The captain snorted. "You're overpaid, you little shit." He took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Listen, this is big . . . We . . . we gotta do this shit, guys, because we could be fucking millionaires and . . . " He blinked, dabbing at some blood leaking out of his nose. "Hmm, nosebleed . . . That's strange." He looked over at James and blinked. "Your nose is bleeding, too . . . "

James dabbed at his own nose and saw that his captain's words were true and his eyes widened. "Now we are fucked," he whispered. He didn't know why he felt that way . . . but he did. They were all fucked now.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

"We need to send a distress signal and get some fucking help out here," James ranted at the captain, holding a handkerchief to his nose, which was bleeding like a faucet.

The captain was leaning against the side of the cabin, which was still oozing smoke through the windows, and he was sobbing as he held a second handkerchief to his own nose.

"This is a mess," he replied. "A big.. fucking... mess. If we contact the authorities, we're gonna be fucked. They're gonna experiment on us, man. We're obviously infected with this shit, me and you." He gazed suspiciously at Frederick and Eddie, and it dawned on him that they weren't bleeding from their noses . . . because they hadn't been bitten. "Jesus, it goes through the bites..."

James spat over the railing, feeling sick and horrified by this whole ordeal. He knew that the captain was right, but that didn't mean that he had to like the truth. He had a throbbing headache and he knew it was because the infection was reaching his brain now.

"We still need to contact the authorities," he argued. "They'll send the cavalry in, and... And maybe we can be cured."

The captain shook his head vehemently, spraying spots of blood everywhere from his nostrils as he did. "We're on our own, James, god-damn it, and you know it.. Time is money for you and I. There's not much time, so lend me your ear for a second." He grunted and pressed the handkerchief hard against his nose, uselessly trying to stop the blood. "We need to go down and explore that ship and find out what happened down there before it's too late."

James laughed despite the pain pulsing through his entire body. "That's crazy. You're crazy, man. If you wanna go all the way down there to get eaten just like Dan did, well.. Go. I definitely won't stop you. Fuck, I hope you do. Take your best shot. But I guarantee you, you're only gonna find trouble down there."

The captain grinned hysterically. "You want to die? Because I think we're dying, James. We're gonna be one of those things if we don't find out what happened down there, and capture those things, and find a cure."

Frederick cleared his throat, gaining everyone's attention. "Maybe he's on to something," he responded thoughtfully, wiping the tears off of his face and still staring down at the body bag containing Jenny's corpse. "It's essential that we go back down there. The healthy ones, at least. Eddie and I, if he's up to it." He turned and stared at Eddie.

"Sure thing, man," the younger diver whispered after a moment. "Always ready to do some diving with you, man. I owe you for getting me this job."

Frederick grinned. "Stick with me, kid, and we'll get through this thing. Let's take care of some business."

The captain smiled as well. "I'm gonna make you really famous, guys."

Eddie narrowed his eyes at the man he had once respected, one of the best captains he'd ever known and the man who was now a raving lunatic, basically. "We're not doing this for fame," he responded. "We're doing it for James, to cure him. He's our friend."

Eddie and Frederick got up and headed off to suit up. James shoved the captain up against the wall of the cabin roughly and stared into his face.

"If you're wrong..." James smiled. "If you're wrong, you're going to get shot."

He yanked the flare gun from the captain's hands and followed Frederick and Eddie.

"Shit, man," the captain murmured, staring after the three divers.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

James groaned as he stood at the railing watching Frederick and Eddie make last-minute preparations on their gear. They were all suited up and ready, but James couldn't focus on his two friends right now. The pain had become excruciating, and it was in every ounce of his body now.

Eddie looked up to say something and saw James. "Dude, are you okay?" he asked, concerned. "You look terrible."

James nodded. "I can hack it. Now, you need to know some stuff before you and Frederick dive on that zombie shipwreck. There's more than one in there. Be careful."

Eddie hesitated for an instant and looked like he might have said something to the effect of chickening out. The captain saved the day. Wiping frustratedly at his bleeding nose, the captain handed Frederick and Eddie a pneumatic-powered speargun each.

"Kick their ass," the captain snarled with a predatory grin on his face.

James grinned as well. Pneumatic spearguns were great. After firing, the expanded gas or air used to fire was kept, and could be re-compressed by the user underwater. They weren't hunting fish with them right now, though.

They were hunting zombies.

---------

Eddie felt like screaming all the way down to the shipwreck of the _Cedes_, two hundred and some odd feet below the surface. He felt like a condemned man on his way to an execution, after what he had heard when James had described Dan's gory death at the hands of the creature. That was not Eddie's ideal way to die, for sure. But they had to capture one of those zombies so they could find the cure for James, and Eddie knew he had to do this.

Eddie and Frederick both paused at the massive hole in the ship's side, feeling like men about to enter a piranha tank and just as suicidal. They both waited for the other to enter first, and finally Eddie made a shooing gesture with the hand that wasn't clasping the speargun, the signal that Frederick was 'clear to proceed first.'

Frederick raised his middle finger in the universal 'fuck you' signal, in return, and then swam forward into the hole, speargun at the ready. Eddie was just plain scared, but he followed after a moment or two.

The two divers disappeared into the dark interior of the shipwreck.

------------

Both the captain and James were sitting against the wall of the cabin back in the boat on the surface, struggling to deal with the blazing pain radiating through their bodies. They knew their time was short now, even shorter than it had been before.

James didn't like this one bit. He wasn't prepared to die. He had a bunch of girls back at home willing to screw his brains out, he had a niece that he adored and whose birthday was coming up in a few weeks.. He just wasn't prepared. He glared at the captain with bitter despair.

"If you hadn't tried to examine that zombie, neither of us wouldn't have gotten bitten and Jenny wouldn't be dead, you asshole," he accused angrily.

"We'll fix this," the captain replied dreamily. He had taken a few pain pills and even though they hadn't helped the pain (there wasn't any medication on Earth besides morphine to numb the pain of a zombie infection) he was feeling pretty buzzed. "Easy peasy lemon squeezy."

James controlled himself for only a second and then he was on top of the captain and then they were rolling around, slamming punch after punch after kick into each other. James grunted as the captain's fist hit his cheekbone once and then he held the other man down with both hands around his throat, squeezing tightly.

"Just get it over with," the captain wheezed helplessly.

James laughed. "Save your breath, I'm not gonna kill you." He yanked the captain to his feet and tossed him against the railing.

The other man laughed. "Yeah, because you know that if you kill me, I'll come back as one of them and chew you up. Mmmm..." He glared savagely at James.

"Not if I aimed for the head," James replied calmly, pointing the flare gun between the captain's eyes steadily.

"What is it you want?" the captain asked nervously. He knew he was an inch from dying and the wrong words and his head would be blown off his pale and sweaty shoulders.

James smiled widely. "Call in some backup on that radio. They'll only listen to you because you're the captain, and they know your voice so they'll trust you. Don't tell them why to come, just tell them to come."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

The captain put the radio mic back on the rack, glaring at James, who was standing guard nearby with the flare gun at the ready. "They said they'd be here, an hour at most," the captain spat angrily. "You're so fucked when they get here. Holding a superior at gunpoint on his own fucking boat..."

James grinned and pulled the trigger of the flare gun and watched as the upper right side of the captain's head exploded, spraying fire as it blowed bits of brain and blood and skull chips everywhere.

"I don't give a shit," he whispered in response to his dead captain as he turned and stared over the railing, waiting anxiously for either Frederick or Eddie to get back to the surface . . . or for the Coast Guard to arrive. His nose had stopped bleeding and he was hoping everything would turn out okay. Too bad he didn't notice that the body bag containing Jenny's corpse was twitching slightly.

------------

Eddie stared anxiously through his dive-visor, trying to peer through the freezing black water surrounding him as he swam slowly through the dark interiors of the shipwreck, following just inches behind Frederick. He was scared shitless and the fact that it was very cold didn't help at all. He tried to relax and then realized that was a bad idea. He had to be ready in case the zombies lunged out of nowhere. He had to have Frederick's back. He set his will against the freezing cold water and forced the despair away.

Of course, he wasn't expecting the zombie dressed in the waterlogged remains of a tuxedo to lunge and bite right through the shoulder of his wetsuit. Eddie let out a shriek of pain and his regulator fell out of his mouth and he shrieked again but this time, he didn't get a mouthful of oxygen: he got a lungful of unforgivingly cold saltwater. Pain and panic flooded Eddie and for the first time, he realized that he could and might die down here. He abruptly turned and kicked the zombie away into the wall and watched as it floated slowly backwards and bumped into the wall, snarling soundlessly through the water. Eddie turned, grabbed the regulator that was still hanging on the hose coming from the tank on his back, and stuffed it back in his mouth, taking a nice deep breath of oxygen -- and swam silently away, towards the exit, blood streaming from the hole in his suit and water streaming in. The suit was designed to keep the cold water out and away from his skin as much as possible. He had two hundred feet to swim upwards in that cold water.. But he swam away from his friend, without looking back.

Frederick had kept going onward into the shipwreck, unaware anything had happened. You can't hear underwater, and he had no idea the whole exchange between Eddie and the zombie had occured. Now the zombie which had bitten Eddie was closing in from behind, closing in for the kill predatorily. Finally, right when the zombie had almost reached him, Frederick turned and calmly raised his weapon and fired, not fazed by the sudden sight of the zombie at all.

The spear hit the zombie between the eyes, a perfect shot, warm blood geysering out and turning the water a bright crimson around the floating, twice-dead corpse. Frederick stared past through the blood at the tiny, retreating figure of Eddie and just treaded water for a moment, shocked. "You fucking coward, where are you fucking going," he whispered with difficulty against the regulator stuffed in his mouth.

Frederick would have followed, but James was his friend and he wasn't willing to let go yet. He turned and bravely headed deeper into the shipwreck, grimly reloading the speargun.

------

James was so tired, but he was afraid to fall asleep, because he was terrified that he would never wake up. He would just die in his sleep and become a zombie. He figured he could just lay down on the desk and rest. He turned to do just that when he saw the leather bodybag rip open. James blinked in surprise and groped for the flare gun, raising it just as Jenny's head popped up through the hole her fingernails had torn laboriously through the leather. He squeezed the trigger when he had it aimed right, but the gun just clicked empty.

"Oh, fudge," James whispered, tossing the useless piece of metal aside and pressing back against the railing as the zombie-Jenny struggled out of the body bag. He searched her face, eyes darting frantically back and forth, but those dark beautiful eyes that he had known and admired (but never commented on, because she was obviously Frederick's chick) were gone and had been replaced by milky white orbs. "Oh, lawdy..." Jenny finally managed to drag herself completely out of the torn body bag, leaving a disgusting black bloody streak on the deck of the boat. She wasn't 'that girl with the freckles' anymore. She was a zombie, true and blue.

"Hell no," James murmured. He looked around anxiously for something, anything to use as a weapon, his eyes pleading for help. James was no coward but he could tell he was fucked. Sure, most people would be saying 'It's still just a woman, even if it is a zombie. Toss it overboard.' But that zombie was ruthless and it would strike ruthlessly. It wasn't some weakling that you could just toss overboard. James needed a plan, and fast -- the Jenny-zombie was staggering toward him, favoring one leg where the first zombie had gotten its chowdown on mostly. "Fuck you, bitch!" he yelled. Having a gun right now would be a blessing. "Shit, man, shit."

The corpse that had been Jenny lunged forward viciously with an inhuman moan. James swung a lucky punch and his fist smacked into the zombie's cheek and it tripped and toppled half-overboard. James rushed to shove her all the way over the railing, but the zombie turned and dealt a nasty bite wound to his right hand. He recoiled with a scream of pain, glaring at his blood-drenched hand, and that gave the zombie enough time to haul itself back aboard. Its hunger for human flesh was so great that it wouldn't seem to give up no matter what.

James backed away through the open door of the cabin, stepping over the captain's sprawled corpse without even looking down. The zombie followed three feet from him, stalking him almost. James was completely empty-handed and he looked around the scorched interior of the cabin for anything to use. He grinned as he suddenly saw an oxygen tank (Dan's extra, he thought with a pang of loss) and he grabbed it up, swinging it as hard as he could. The zombie staggered back, its nose smashed flat, and fell on its ass. Not only was its nose smashed, James saw with a crowing laugh of satisfaction, but its right ear was now just a red, bloody smear.

Paying no attention to its disfigured face, the undead creature got back to its feet and kept coming. Summoning all of his last deep dredges of strength, James swung the oxygen tank one final time and cracked her skull with a crunchy thud. The zombie toppled and hit the ground, brains leaking from the hole smashed through her forehead. She was finally fucking dead and it was such a mammoth relief.

James collapsed and slid down the wall into a sitting position, literally trembling with exhaustion.

"It was supposed to be a nice quiet weekend diving on a salvage operation to some fucking ocean liner," he murmured. "That's all the captain told me. And now . . . " He looked at the two chunks missing from both his bicep and his right hand and he began to sob. He probably would have been sobbing forever --- or at least until the Coast Guard arrived -- if he hadn't heard a diver surface by the boat and call out for help in a wheezing, equally exhausted voice.

"Eddie!" James yelled, running toward the railing and leaping over the bodies of Jenny and the captain carelessly. His friends came first above everything else.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter Six**

As he had ran towards the railing, James had grabbed the box of extra flares and had snatched the flaregun and was loading it while he watched Eddie flounder towards the boat's built-in dive ladder on the side. James loaded the two flares in.. and then saw the blood, everywhere, in the water, soaking into Eddie's wetsuit, primarily from the shoulder where he could see the suit was ripped.

James leveled the flare gun inches from Eddie's nose as the younger man climbed the ladder and Eddie stopped as soon as he saw the gun aimed at him, both barrels.

"Woah, s-s-slow down," he stuttered, climbing aboard, dripping seawater and blood everywhere and gazing in complete shock at the scorched and bloody bodies of the captain and Jenny. He turned back to James. "What the fuck is this?"

James shoved Eddie against the railing. "Shut your fucking mouth," he ordered. "Just shut your stupid mouth." James was swaying side-to-side now, a distant look in his eye. "Where the hell is Frederick?"

Eddie swallowed very hard, knowing that if he told James that he had abandoned their best friend in literally the most dangerous place on Earth at this moment, he was going to die a fiery death. "Just calm down, James. I was... I was just so afraid. I'm sorry."

James stared down at the water, narrowing his eyes. "Frederick," he whispered. "My poor friend. What a fucking day." Tears were coming, he could feel them, but before they could form, Eddie lunged for the flare pistol and it went off.

-----------------

As Frederick swam through the shipwreck's upside-down underwater corridors and labryinths, he had the strangest feeling that he was totally alone. He figured he didn't have a very good chance of surviving. He was just not that stupid. _I can still do this_, he thought fiercely to himself. Nothing whatsoever was going to stop him from helping James. And any thoughts to the otherwise were as useless as an ash tray on a motorcycle.

Trying to ignore all of this inner turmoil, Frederick opened a door at the end of a tunnel-like hallway, slow and careful, aiming the speargun inside cautiously, ready to fire at the slightest movement. Of course, that was when the zombie lunged from the right and tried to take a bite of the back of his neck.

Frederick heard the swishing water ever so slightly and turned, holding his speargun up defensively and recoiling as the zombie impaled itself through the throat on the unfired spear in the gun's barrel. Mindful of the contagious bite-marks, he carefully planted both flipper-covered feet in the middle of the zombie's decaying chest and slowly nudged it off the spear and then kicked it firmly away so it floated helplessly away down the hallway, unable to grab anything to hold itself because it simply wasn't smart enough.

Frederick went to start swimming after his new 'prisoner of war', and then turned and his eyes widened behind the mask's transparent faceplate. He saw about thirty or forty zombies coming at a reasonably fast pace down the hallway, the ones behind pushing the ones in front unintentionally faster in their haste to get at the FOOD ahead.

"Holy Christ!" Frederick whispered behind his regulator, even though he was an atheist, and then he started swimming harder than he had ever swam in his life, catching up the zombie with the fresh hole in its throat and dragging it towards the exit: the massive hole blown in the side of the Cedes. Putting the speargun on his shoulder, facing behind him toward the pursuing zombies, Frederick aimed without looking and fired and hoped he had slowed them down even slightly.

Keeping a tight grip on the zombie's collar so the monster couldn't take a chunk out of his arm, Frederick hauled him upward. About twenty feet above the Cedes, Frederick stopped and looked back down, almost expecting to not see the zombies come out of the hole in pursuit but there they came, all forty.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Frederick muttered, dragging the zombie upward as fast as he could, the zombies pushing each other onward just thirteen feet below and closing. It was a race to the stop and the winner either got freedom . . . or a gourmet meal. Frederick fervently hoped he won.

----------

The flare shot skyward, but only after it had skidded off Eddie's face. The stench of burning hair was acrid in the air as Eddie staggered backwards, grabbing at his blackened face with a shriek of horrified anger.

"YOU BURNT A HOLE THROUGH MY FUCKING FACE!" Eddie shrieked again, charging blindly towards James, who shoved him gently backwards.

"No, you dumbass," he sighed. "Your face is just burnt a little . . . Now, I've . . . "

He stopped, staring straight ahead with wide eyes. The flare pistol fell from limp fingers and James just kept staring straight ahead as his pupils dilated visibly and slobber fell from his open mouth.

Moaning and bleeding, Eddie noticed James wasn't moving and blinking rapidly, he stared at his friend. "Hey, uh, James... You okay? Dude?" He tapped his friend. James went to his knees, still with that blank stare fixed straight ahead. He toppled over face-down. "Dude, get your sorry ass up," Eddie sighed through the pain, trying to rub his eyes clear of soot as he bent down beside James and tried to shake him.

Suddenly, where he had been limp as a fish, James went solid as a stone and took fishlike gulps of air, as if he was a fish out of water.

"Woah," Eddie yelled. "Don't die on me, man, please don't. I'm sure I've forgotten to apologize for something, some prank I played on you, some name I called you. Oh, please don't die on me, James." Eddie fought to remain calm as he got back to his feet, grabbed up the flare pistol, and aimed it at James' body. "Oh ho, this sucks ass."

He heard a loud splash and turned to see Frederick surfacing, holding a struggling, moaning zombie with him.

"Help me up, Ed, you fucking coward!" Frederick yelled. "There's forty zombies like ten feet below me, and they're coming up fast!"

Eddie nodded and turned to make sure James was still motionless before he climbed down the ladder to help Frederick and then he blinked. James wasn't laying in that spot anymore. Eddie looked to the left and his eyes widened right before the James-zombie hit him with a football tackle and they both flew over the railing, soaring like birds for just a second before they hit the water and sank, struggling madly with each other.

Frederick stared in shock. "This shit is fucked up." He shoved the 'captured' zombie with the throat wound away and swam toward the safety of the boat as fast as he could, knowing the zombies below were probably close enough to touch his flippers now.

"HELP ME!!!!!"

Frederick, one hand on the ladder, turned and watched Eddie's head bust up above the surface, struggling madly with the James-zombie and about ten of the first zombies from the wave coming up from below.

"HELP ME!" Eddie screamed again.

Frederick sighed. "Damn it all to hell, Eddie, you always fuck stuff up!"

He dived back off the ladder.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

As Frederick swam quickly towards Eddie's location, he could see that a lot of blood was coming out all over there and zombie heads were bobbing up two and three at a time, again and again. Frederick had a bad feeling that most of that blood, if not all of it, was Eddie's, and if it was, then it was useless to swim out there, because if all that blood was Eddie's, the guy was a goner. But Eddie was Frederick's friend, and Frederick wasn't a man who just abandoned his friends to a horde of zombies, no matter how cowardly that friend was.

Then Eddie kicked away one of the zombies enough to get his head above the water and choked out the bravest words he had ever uttered. "Fred, get back man. You can't fight them all. Just leave me here."

Frederick hesitated a heart-beat, treading water, and then started to swim furiously back towards the ladder as fast as he could. He had the shock of his life when a zombie in the water below grabbed his ankle, but he kicked it in the face and it let go, surprisingly. Massive relief coursed through Frederick as he climbed the ladder and slid over the railing to lie exhausted on the deck, water spreading out in a wide pool around him.

Five minutes later, when he had marginally regained his strength and when Eddie's dying screams had finally faded away to silence, Fred leaned over the railing and glared at the zombies floating below silently staring up at him, hunger in their glazed eyes.

"Yeah, that's pretty fucking funny, huh?" he yelled hysterically. "I got away, motherfuckers. And I'm up here and you can't get me because you can't fucking climb, huh?" The zombies continued to stare up at him. "Oh, did I hurt your feelings a little bit, did crazy Fred hurt your feelings? Hahahahaha..." He fell back and rolled around on the deck screaming with laughter uncontrollably at the thought.

He was still laughing when he heard the rotors of the helicopter approaching. Fred sat up with a grin on his water-splattered face behind the goggles, a ray of hope shining within his heart. He hadn't really had an escape plan, a way to get off the boat, he had just kinda planned on sitting there until he died somehow. He ran to the railing, waving at the distant approaching helicopter excitedly. He thought it must be the Coast Guard rescue team, but had no idea that this helicopter had actually ambushed the Coast Guard would-be rescuers and they were now coming for him.

"You're so fucking beautiful," he screamed happily. "You beautiful S.O.B.s!"

Frederick expected a rescue. He didn't expect a machine gun clattering on the chopper and bullets tearing along the side of the small boat towards him. Frederick hit the deck... literally, covering his ears and screaming in horror, wondering why he couldn't ever get a fucking _break_. The machine gun bullets hit something flammable, probably an oxygen tank, and flames leaped skyward, and the dive boat started listing to the port side, a hole blown in the side eerily resembling the hole in the side of the shipwreck two hundred feet below the boat's exact position.

Without hesitation, Fred turned and dived off the boat, machine gun bullets zipping past him as he did. He dived deep, swimming downwards and stuffing his regulator back in his mouth. He had never been more glad that he hadn't taken off his gear. He knew he had about half a tank left and the zombies were kind of stuck floating on the top. He was safe for the moment. He looked back up at the boat sinking toward the bottom and shook his head grimly. Fred had three options: swim for the bottom and drown, swim for the top and die or... stay where he was and drown.

Frederick made his decision and turned, diving back down. He was going to find out what had happened in this entire mess, what had caused it all.

--------------

The chopper hovered above the spot where the wreckage of the dive boat was slipping slowly beneath the waves.

"This is a bad situation," one of the men in black body armor said quietly, reloading the machine gun mounted on the side of the chopper. "He's the last witness, and I think he escaped down below. He's heading down for the shipwreck.. If he finds out what's down there, we're fucked. We've got to exterminate him."

Another man sitting nearby, this one dressed in SCUBA gear identical to Frederick's, smiled without any humor. "Consider it done." He checked the underwater-equipped rifle and grinned again. The underwater rifle did not fire bullets, because conventional bullets would not work beneath the ocean or lakes. It fired steel needle-like projectiles at the target: they would be sufficient. "He is just one man, unarmed and alone. I think I can take him just fine. You stay up here and exterminate the rest of the..." He gazed down at the zombies staring up at them from below. "The rest of the experiments, while I'm down there."

"This is a fucking disaster," the machine-gunner replied, but nodded his agreement to the diver's words.

The diver smiled, again without humor, and dived over the side of the chopper, landing with a smack and diving immediately before the zombies could reach him.

"Totally crazy," the gunner murmured before swiveling his gun. The zombies below jerked spasmatically as they were sprayed with machine gun fire. A sniper on the other side of the chopper picked off the ones that still lived after the sustained burst.


	8. Chapter 8 The End

**Chapter Eight**

Frederick was underwater again -- and it sucked. He had half a tank of air left and it would take _at least_ half a tank to get to the shipwreck even. He knew deep down that he wasn't coming back from this alive. Frederick was a little saddened by that but he knew it was his only choice -- and it was the right thing to do.

Frederick turned to look back up towards the surface and saw the other diver swimming steadily down towards him holding the underwater-equipped rifle. His eyes bulged in shock when he saw the rifle, because he himself was weaponless and thus defenseless.

The other diver fired a few shots through the swirling water. Frederick grunted through his regulator as one of the projectiles ripped across his thigh, opening the suit and allowing unimaginably cold water to flood into his suit, further shortening the time he had left to live. He turned to flee down towards the shipwreck and grunted as another projectile slammed into his left shoulder. He swam awkwardly towards the relative safety of the shipwreck.

Frederick felt like he was playing hide-and-seek with the devil as he laid on his belly in one of the flooded corridors of the wrecked cruise liner. He expected to be shot dead any second when the other diver -- who was swimming just feet away-- spotted him.

Frederick realized he still had the fully loaded speargun and he rose up, right when the diver saw him. They aimed and fired at the same time. The other diver grunted as he was hit in the stomach and he floated backwards, blood coloring the water crimson around the hole that the spear (which was still imbedded in his guts) had torn.

Frederick certainly couldn't see the crippling blow he had dealt to his opponent -- definitely not through the hole in his head that the underwater bullet had torn.

The other diver kicked the body away and tried to get a pained gasp of air. After a moment, he realized that his oxygen-starved lungs were never going to get any more air, as he looked at his gauge and saw that, after the chase, his tanks were completely out . . . two hundred and some odd feet underwater.

He paddled in a panicky whirl of motion towards the huge hole in the wreck's side which had been unofficially designated the main entry and exit. He didn't make it. He was dead by the time he was halfway towards the hole, and his body began to float peacefully backwards with the current, bumping gently into the body of Frederick as they did a macabre little dance of the dead together.

Then, the diver's body twitched.

THE END


End file.
